Stop insulting our intelligence 343

Games Halo Infinite
1

I have generally been happy from what I’ve been hearing about Halo Infinite, but one thing that has been a continuous frustration to me is 343’s comments about our comprehension of the story. Take this article from the new director of player voice:

Halo 5’s story was too dense?

At the end if the day, 343 needs to understand something I feel they refuse to. Halo 5 was not bad because the story had too much lore or was too dense for halo fans to understand. People didn’t say “wth is going on” because we’re dumb. The criticisms came because Halo 5’s story was just…BAD, horribly written, poorly acted, etc…

I hope 343 understands that we just want a story that has lore, that deals with deep story, but is well written; not a watered down “approachable” story, because we’re too stupid to understand the story.

Take some responsibility 343, Halo 5 was poorly written, not too dense. I feel like that is what halo fans are actually saying about the story.

Let me know if you agree people :slight_smile:

2

> 2533274849879319;1:
> I have generally been happy from what I’ve been hearing about Halo Infinite, but one thing that has been a continuous frustration to me is 343’s comments about our comprehension of the story. Take this article from the new director of player voice:
>
> Halo 5’s story was too dense?
>
> At the end if the day, 343 needs to understand something I feel they refuse to. Halo 5 was not bad because the story had too much lore or was too dense for halo fans to understand. People didn’t say “wth is going on” because we’re dumb. The criticisms came because Halo 5’s story was just…BAD, horribly written, poorly acted, etc…
>
> I hope 343 understands that we just want a story that has lore, that deals with deep story, but is well written; not a watered down “approachable” story, because we’re too stupid to understand the story.
>
> Take some responsibility 343, Halo 5 was poorly written, not too dense. I feel like that is what halo fans are actually saying about the story.
>
> Let me know if you agree people :slight_smile:

Honestly it needed better writing, the characters were uninteresting, the enemies felt nonthreatening, and you felt like you had no real motivation to do anything aside from pLaY ThE GaMe YoU pAiD fOr; 343I honestly doesn’t seem to understand what made Halo games so popular in the first place, I honestly hope they don’t repeat past mistakes, we want the narrative to be engaging, characters to actually have purpose and personality(Buck was fine), and i most certainly want my goal to motivate me to play

3

> 2535449208874192;2:
> > 2533274849879319;1:
> > I have generally been happy from what I’ve been hearing about Halo Infinite, but one thing that has been a continuous frustration to me is 343’s comments about our comprehension of the story. Take this article from the new director of player voice:
> >
> > Halo 5’s story was too dense?
> >
> > At the end if the day, 343 needs to understand something I feel they refuse to. Halo 5 was not bad because the story had too much lore or was too dense for halo fans to understand. People didn’t say “wth is going on” because we’re dumb. The criticisms came because Halo 5’s story was just…BAD, horribly written, poorly acted, etc…
> >
> > I hope 343 understands that we just want a story that has lore, that deals with deep story, but is well written; not a watered down “approachable” story, because we’re too stupid to understand the story.
> >
> > Take some responsibility 343, Halo 5 was poorly written, not too dense. I feel like that is what halo fans are actually saying about the story.
> >
> > Let me know if you agree people :slight_smile:
>
> Honestly it needed better writing, the characters were uninteresting, the enemies felt nonthreatening, and you felt like you had no real motivation to do anything aside from pLaY ThE GaMe YoU pAiD fOr; 343I honestly doesn’t seem to understand what made Halo games so popular in the first place, I honestly hope they don’t repeat past mistakes, we want the narrative to be engaging, characters to actually have purpose and personality(Buck was fine), and i most certainly want my goal to motivate me to play

Right, and what I’m saying is they are claiming that wasn’t the problem, they’re saying we just were too stupid to understand such a “dense and amazingly written story” -_-

4

Calling Halo 5 ‘dense’ is a poor use of the word because it has the connotation that there was something deep and meaningful packed into it. I think ‘cluttered’ is more appropriate for Halo 5’s story, because it’s definitely packed full of lore–just not the kind that makes for an engaging and satisfying campaign. Halo 2 did the “so much happening at once” thing a lot better in my opinion.

5

343 said halo would now stick to a simpler story. thats realy bad. story complexity is fine, but it should only rely on alpha canon sources ( the games, nothing else) to be understandable and be generaly well written.

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> 2533274849879319;1:
> I hope 343 understands that we just want a story that has lore, that deals with deep story, but is well written; not a watered down “approachable” story, because we’re too stupid to understand the story.

I want it to be approachable in the sense that it’s generally comprehensible to players who haven’t read any Halo books or other outside media. In fact, I think it would be great if it was approachable to players who haven’t even played a Halo game before. I think it could still potentially be approachable in that way, while also having a deep well-written story.

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> 2533274945422049;5:
> 343 said halo would now stick to a simpler story. thats realy bad. story complexity is fine, but it should only rely on alpha canon sources ( the games, nothing else) to be understandable and be generaly well written.

Any outside material could very well be used in the games, there’s no need to limit the story to “game’s only”.
The issue has been very poor implementation of outside material into the games.

It would actually be in i343’s interest as a business to properly use outside material in the games.
How? Why?
Feed the player enough background of the outside material currently in use in the current story so that the current story makes sense.
Don’t feed the player all the background, and leave them feeling like there’s more to it and they may go do some googling, finding out it’s from a book, or comic or whatever, then they may buy that, and more thereafter.

8

> 2533274795123910;7:
> > 2533274945422049;5:
> > 343 said halo would now stick to a simpler story. thats realy bad. story complexity is fine, but it should only rely on alpha canon sources ( the games, nothing else) to be understandable and be generaly well written.
>
> Any outside material could very well be used in the games, there’s no need to limit the story to “game’s only”.
> The issue has been very poor implementation of outside material into the games.
>
> It would actually be in i343’s interest as a business to properly use outside material in the games.
> How? Why?
> Feed the player enough background of the outside material currently in use in the current story so that the current story makes sense.
> Don’t feed the player all the background, and leave them feeling like there’s more to it and they may go do some googling, finding out it’s from a book, or comic or whatever, then they may buy that, and more thereafter.

i mean: necessary to understand the main story at all.
explaining things in game ( show don’t tell) is fine of course.
and unexplained snipits could be placed like the mendicant bias interaction in halo 3.

but the main story should not force you to read extra lore outside of the game (halo 5, halo 4 to an extent ). the bungie halo games did pretty well in this regard. halo 4’s story was great too, but the explanation by the librarian was a bit to condensed ( an extra level to spread the info would have been nice, but i think this would have been to rescource intensive).

blue team for example was not explained in halo 5 at all. a few voicelines about “old team, not seen properly since the fall of reach, bootcamp” and some banter would have been enough. fireteam osiris , jul mdama and halsey could have used some lines like this too.

9

> 2535449208874192;2:
> > 2533274849879319;1:
> >
>
> Honestly it needed better writing, the characters were uninteresting, the enemies felt nonthreatening, and you felt like you had no real motivation to do anything aside from pLaY ThE GaMe YoU pAiD fOr; 343I honestly doesn’t seem to understand what made Halo games so popular in the first place, I honestly hope they don’t repeat past mistakes, we want the narrative to be engaging, characters to actually have purpose and personality(Buck was fine), and i most certainly want my goal to motivate me to play

I have to disagree with some things.
First, the enemies were threatening. Like, how can you think that hundreds of Smart AIs, which are in control of hundreds of Human stations or ships (Governor Sloan), have united to a single AI which is in control of deadly technology (as we saw in the previous title) in order to FORCE peace in the whole GALAXY be “nonthreatening”?
Then, the motivation is to stop them. In my first playthrough of the campaign, after I learned her intents in the mission The Breaking, and after seeing how she plans to do that in Guardians, I legit knew that BLAM! has gone south. I wanted to try and stop them in Halo 5, but the game clearly pulled a Halo 2 and told me: Finish it in the next game.

Yes, it could be better written, but to say that nothing is at stake or that there’s no real threat… I say that’s ignorance. In the previous games, we’ve witnessed what the Forerunners were capable of. Ring Worlds (of mass extinction, as told in CE), Shield Worlds (HW), and a forger that’s larger than Earth (The Ark). Then, in Halo 4, we get a glimpse of what complete control over such technology can do. What did we see? A big tower thing that transforms living beings into data for mindless killing machines (Composer for the Knights), and how a single ship that’s larger than the forgin’ Death Star was made from giant floating pylons (Mantle’s Approach) in mere moments. What’s more is that we saw the Composer in action in one of H4’s terminals. Despite still needing Halo Waypoint to see them, it’s still a resource you have to find in the game. Now, in Halo 5, we’re told something curious about the Guardians:

> Why did she call so many? A single Guardian can effectively police a solar system.

And in the same game, we get to see why, as pretty much every electronic on and near Earth was disabled by a SINGLE EMP discharge from a SINGLE Guardian. By logic, the whole Solar System as we know it was disabled by the Guardian’s discharge, affecting other planets like Mars or other natural satellites such as Europa or Io (two moons of Jupiter).

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> 2533274849879319;3:
> > 2535449208874192;2:
> > > 2533274849879319;1:
> > > I have generally been happy from what I’ve been hearing about Halo Infinite, but one thing that has been a continuous frustration to me is 343’s comments about our comprehension of the story. Take this article from the new director of player voice:
> > >
> > > Halo 5’s story was too dense?
> > >
> > > At the end if the day, 343 needs to understand something I feel they refuse to. Halo 5 was not bad because the story had too much lore or was too dense for halo fans to understand. People didn’t say “wth is going on” because we’re dumb. The criticisms came because Halo 5’s story was just…BAD, horribly written, poorly acted, etc…
> > >
> > > I hope 343 understands that we just want a story that has lore, that deals with deep story, but is well written; not a watered down “approachable” story, because we’re too stupid to understand the story.
> > >
> > > Take some responsibility 343, Halo 5 was poorly written, not too dense. I feel like that is what halo fans are actually saying about the story.
> > >
> > > Let me know if you agree people :slight_smile:
> >
> > Honestly it needed better writing, the characters were uninteresting, the enemies felt nonthreatening, and you felt like you had no real motivation to do anything aside from pLaY ThE GaMe YoU pAiD fOr; 343I honestly doesn’t seem to understand what made Halo games so popular in the first place, I honestly hope they don’t repeat past mistakes, we want the narrative to be engaging, characters to actually have purpose and personality(Buck was fine), and i most certainly want my goal to motivate me to play
>
> Right, and what I’m saying is they are claiming that wasn’t the problem, they’re saying we just were too stupid to understand such a “dense and amazingly written story” -_-

It’s all an elaborate way to say they fired someone politely because he wrote dense lore into the story for no other reason except that he thought it would be cool, and who was a horrible choice for a story writer anyway.

11

> 2535418288909351;4:
> Calling Halo 5 ‘dense’ is a poor use of the word because it has the connotation that there was something deep and meaningful packed into it. I think ‘cluttered’ is more appropriate for Halo 5’s story, because it’s definitely packed full of lore–just not the kind that makes for an engaging and satisfying campaign. Halo 2 did the “so much happening at once” thing a lot better in my opinion.

I so agree, Halo 2 was perfection in my mind of story depth, writing, lore implementation, etc… Say what you want about cliffhangers and certain gameplay decisions, but depth and scope of story telling in Halo 2 was outstanding.

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> 2533274856071306;10:
> It’s all an elaborate way to say they fired someone politely because he wrote dense lore into the story for no other reason except that he thought it would be cool, and who was a horrible choice for a story writer anyway.

It’s not solely down to 1 person though, there is a team at 343 and at most studios that handle narrative / writing. Piling it all on one person isn’t really fair. To quote GrimBrother One

> I’m not a big fan of calling folks out on a personal level, especially when it’s nearly impossible to attribute all challenges faced by a narrative experience - especially game development - on one person. Especially when no one else posting here would actually have any real insight to internal processes.

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> 2533274795123910;7:
> Any outside material could very well be used in the games, there’s no need to limit the story to “game’s only”.
> The issue has been very poor implementation of outside material into the games.

This nails exactly what needs to be refined with regards to Halo’s EU. Better implementation is what is needed. There doesn’t need to be swim lanes with stories, or complete disregard for anything not in the games. If there was simply a better means for bridging the two mediums together, things would be better. 343i is heading in the right direction with the Phoenix Logs in Halo Wars 2.
Better narrative pieces for exposition (such as cutscenes, in-game dialogue, terminals) to help paint the picture is more preferable than “swim lanes.”

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> 2533274813317074;12:
> > 2533274856071306;10:
> > It’s all an elaborate way to say they fired someone politely because he wrote dense lore into the story for no other reason except that he thought it would be cool, and who was a horrible choice for a story writer anyway.
>
> It’s not solely down to 1 person though, there is a team at 343 and at most studios that handle narrative / writing. Piling it all on one person isn’t really fair. To quote GrimBrother One
>
>
> > I’m not a big fan of calling folks out on a personal level, especially when it’s nearly impossible to attribute all challenges faced by a narrative experience - especially game development - on one person. Especially when no one else posting here would actually have any real insight to internal processes.

There was an old LateNightGaming video about him talking to an artist at a comic con event and when he got to talking to them about Halo he’d mention Halo 5’s story artist to the artist who responded a bit blown away and pretty much said the story artist was notorious in the comic scene as a bad choice for a good story.
This is where my bias comes from :stuck_out_tongue:

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> 2533274851065491;13:
> > 2533274795123910;7:
> > Any outside material could very well be used in the games, there’s no need to limit the story to “game’s only”.
> > The issue has been very poor implementation of outside material into the games.
>
> This nails exactly what needs to be refined with regards to Halo’s EU. Better implementation is what is needed. There doesn’t need to be swim lanes with stories, or complete disregard for anything not in the games. If there was simply a better means for bridging the two mediums together, things would be better. 343i is heading in the right direction with the Phoenix Logs in Halo Wars 2.
> Better narrative pieces for exposition (such as cutscenes, in-game dialogue, terminals) to help paint the picture is more preferable than “swim lanes.”

What if 343 made a game for micro EU campaign snippets like BF1 and BF V has? Little war stories that are fun to play and have some free roam aspects, but not forgetting that it’s a mission

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<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not post inappropriate content or bypass the profanity filter.</mark>
*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

I agree. Halo 5’s campaign was easily the worst thing a Halo game has ever put out. It’s so embarrassing, I feel so embarrassed knowing that my friends may ever associate that campaign with me because I’ve introduced them to Halo.

It was so poorly written. The dialogue flat out sucked. It was so cringe-worthy. Like the references to alcohol; Spartans aren’t dude bros, they’re trying to save the planet, man (and if they are, we don’t wanna see that.) Not only that, the one scene where Buck asks Locke to buy the drinks and Locke says “you ask, you buy.” Like, is he trying to be bad -Yoink-? or is he just a -Yoink-? It didn’t even sound cool man, hardly made sense… just a bad line. if you’d want to add casual spartan stuff, why not do it like you did with Fireteam Majestic? they were cool.

Speaking of Fireteam Majestic, can y’all STOP adding truckloads of characters into the game? and then just killing or forgetting about them in the next one? that is just soooo annoying, and a waste of development time. If you aren’t going to expand of the characters or keep them for more than one game, why should I even pay attention to them? What happened to Fireteams Majestic and Crimson? Why are Sarah Palmer/ Lasky relegated to a few boring cutscenes? Why did you kill off the Didact in a comic book? Why did you kill off Jul M’dama in a crappy cutscene IN THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME??!?!?!?!?! Why did you waste yours and our time in Halo 4 if these characters won’t mean S**T in the next game? Why did you have to create Fireteam Osiris when you could’ve worked Characters of the past into their place? (Fireteam Majestic?) it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense right now, because y’all straight up just made up Tanaka, and that other chick, pulled out Buck out of nowhere and made up Locke, and expect that to make sense to us. Should I even care about anyone other than Chief, Cortana, Halsey, Palmer, Lasky from Halo 5? I’m not surprised if you kill off Locke in a flip book, and completely exclude Osiris and the rest of Blue Team from the next game at this point.

The cutscenes had no substance, they were almost filler to me. I took in the lore stuff, but they didn’t captivate me at all. They were as stiff as robots. I’d gladly give up appearance quality for a realistic spartan, not just dudes standing all the time. OOF, and the opening scene, what is this? the Avengers? running, smashing around, boosting, charging, explosions, etc. I get that you want them to be heroes, but they aren’t. They’re super soldiers, and are in the military, treat them as such. I know the chief did some badass stuff, but it was subtle, mature, and wasn’t overdone.
AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD KEEP POLITICAL CORRECTNESS OUT OF HALO. The parts where Osiris was all like “OMG Arby is soOoO cool for letting Female Elites join his army, he is so modern and coOoOoL!1!11!!” and all they did was “command” an npc ship or two, and come out as butch sounding chicks in radio chatter. The Elites don’t allow ladies to fight, that’s just their culture oh well get used to it. I think that’s fine, I’d rather fight and have the ladies take care of the home(Nation) while we’re away.
I’m pretty sure that there is a disproportionate amount of men compared to women in war, so why did they shove a bunch of chicks into the teams? You need to make ladies cool and their spot? Pull a Miranda Keyes, or have a Michelle Rdz voice a few of the female marines. The ladies you added seemed so forced, thus leaving a bad taste in my mouth. And as for the minorities, why are the only jerks in the game Locke, and Holly Tanaka? Locke’s just a typical dude bro sarcastic guy, and Tanaka is your typical sassy (black?) woman. that’s just awful. Miranda Keyes and Sgt Johnson were not cool 'cuz they were a chick and a black dude, they were cool 'cuz they were GOOD characters.

All of this wouldn’t be so bad I suppose if the campaign was better written. Isn’t the new Battlefield censoring Nazis like removing the swastika, and adding black Nazis? that’s some p***y stuff dude. Get PC CULTURE TF AWAY FROM HALO, I play games to get away from crap like that, and you want to put it in my game now? I KNOW that the things that were done in the campaign were PC culture influenced, and that infuriates me.

17

You can not have a good story in a 5 hour game.

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> 2533274820814456;16:
> AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD KEEP POLITICAL CORRECTNESS OUT OF HALO. The parts where Osiris was all like “OMG Arby is soOoO cool for letting Female Elites join his army, he is so modern and coOoOoL!1!11!!” and all they did was “command” an npc ship or two, and come out as butch sounding chicks in radio chatter. The Elites don’t allow ladies to fight, that’s just their culture oh well get used to it. I think that’s fine, I’d rather fight and have the ladies take care of the home(Nation) while we’re away.
> I’m pretty sure that there is a disproportionate amount of men compared to women in war, so why did they shove a bunch of chicks into the teams? You need to make ladies cool and their spot? Pull a Miranda Keyes, or have a Michelle Rdz voice a few of the female marines. The ladies you added seemed so forced, thus leaving a bad taste in my mouth. And as for the minorities, why are the only jerks in the game Locke, and Holly Tanaka? Locke’s just a typical dude bro sarcastic guy, and Tanaka is your typical sassy (black?) woman. that’s just awful. Miranda Keyes and Sgt Johnson were not cool 'cuz they were a chick and a black dude, they were cool 'cuz they were GOOD characters.

Oof, there is a lot wrong here. For one, the Arbiter integrating female Sangheili into combat roles is actually pretty significant from a world building point of view. Indeed, while Sangheili women have wielded a lot of authority in the home, in fact being the ones to rally defenses to the home in case of attack (see Halo: Thursday War), they were still barred from traditional combat for most of the series history. However, in books like Broken Circle and Shadow of Intent we see this subverted. Thel 'Vadam furthering this development as a major power on Sanghelios is a real big shift for the Sangheili’s society on their own homeworld. It coming up makes total sense. Now, I’d challenge you point out the parts where Osiris makes a huge deal about it. I’d wager, in all actuality, it’s something mentioned at most once in a very passive way and not something that repeatedly comes up as you seem to imply.

As for the “shoving chicks into war”…you realize this is a sci-fi setting in the 26th century, right? In Halo’s setting things are way more egalitarian than they are in our own time. Kinda a neat thing you can do with fiction, you know? However, Halo’s always had integrated teams, especially in the case of the Spartans from the S-IIs, S-IIIs, and now the S-IVs. You also say the ones included are “forced” but don’t explain why. I’ll grant that Osiris as a team wasn’t the best in terms of execution, but each person (except for one) all have places I can see make sense in an ideal Halo 5. Remember how we go to a glassed planet (Meridian)? Guess who comes from another glassed world? Holly Tanaka. She also faced the idea of the UNSC abandoning her and her people on said world. She’d be the ideal person to explain and contextualize the plight of the people of Meridian. She does do this somewhat in Halo 5. Or how about the case of Olympia Vale? We go to Sanghelios, the homeworld of the Sangheili, and she is an expert on the Sangheili language and culture. She’d be the prime choice as a liaison for such a mission. Her skills didn’t translate much in Halo 5, but I can see the intent.

You know who the one character who really is forced is? Buck. Buck only came about because the actor who played Spartan Gabriel Thorne, who was going to be on Osiris, had prior engagements and so they went with Buck instead. Compared to everyone else on the team, Buck has almost nothing to contribute and, I dare say, has essentially been turned into Halo’s version of Cayde-6, a non-serious funny guy.

As for the idea that Locke was a sarcastic dude-bro guy, I have to ask that you explain that. When and how often is he “sarcastic”? Outside of maybe that one line about getting drinks, how is Locke a dude bro? Same goes for Tanaka being a “sassy” black woman. Where and what lines give you that indication? She makes a few quips, but is hardly a stereotype.

In all honesty, these read like complaints you made up.

19

The story wasn’t dense. I’m not sure what 343i means by that. Halo 5’s narration was full of unexplained scenarios and heavy external lore. If I want to play Halo, I expect to learn from the game, not from the books. I was expecting things to be explained, but they never were. That disappointed me. Don’t bring up something without explaining it.

I understand that books help flesh out the lore and background. But this method doesn’t work with games very well. I would have 343 to focus on explaining anything relevant to the game’s main story and environment.

20

also the choreography for the locke/chief fight was so slow. I mean come on they’re SUPER SOLDIERS that can flip TANKS. Not to mention Chief alone has countless strategies and fighting styles drilled into him from childhood. I highly doubt a former assassin and a combat legend would fight that slowly and inefficiently. Next time put mocap suits on ufc fighters. But if you want more flair I’m sure there are plenty of Martial Artists who would love a paycheck.